Thursday, January 28, 2016

How often do we hear: “I’m too busy” or “I don’t have time for that” or “I have too much going on today!” Undoubtedly you’ve heard others say that but you have probably also said that yourself -- perhaps even today! Nothing is inherently sinful with being busy. But busyness can take our minds off of Christ, cloud our hearts from meditating on Him, distract us from serving our local church, and prevent us from communing with God in prayer and study of His Word. I ask you: has the busyness in your life become a plague that has caused you to lose your wonder of God’s magnificence, the privilege of bathing in Jesus’ ravishing and redeeming love, and the supernatural power available to you through the power, filling, and fellowship with the Spirit?

How Busy is Too Busy?
You’re busy. I’m busy. Everyone is busy. But how busy is too busy? How do you know whether you’re too busy? Is it possible to even tell? Perhaps you reflect on the recent past and wonder where your awe of God went. It may be that you ponder the past year of your life and contemplate how it happened that you’ve distanced yourself from your local church. You’re not as involved as you once were. You’re not meeting with anyone for discipleship and accountability. You do read the Bible -- but it can become quite rushed. You do pray -- but it often seems cold, lifeless, powerless, and just doing it to ‘do it.’ Ever been there? How busy are you? How much do you have going on in life? With what do you busy yourself? Perhaps a simple way of thinking of this: I’m too busy when I don’t intentionally make time to meditate on Scripture and actively invest in my local church.

What Occupies My Time?
What occupies your twenty-four hours of the day? Everyone has the same amount of time. The question is: with what do you fill it? Sleep? Eating? Work? Health programs? Sports? TV? Social media? Commuting? Take inventory and consider how you spend every minute of every hour of every day? Do you redeem it for Christ? We should! Our blessed Lord tells us to redeem the time because the days are evil. Every minute we live is a gracious gift from our God for us to live for His supreme glory and not our narcissistic pleasures. Let us live for Christ! Do you watch TV for one hour per day? Do you invest 5-10 hours per week in sports? Do you go to the gym and work out daily for an hour? Do you peruse Facebook or other social media with consistency? Consider. Think. Meditate. Don’t be too busy to examine how busy you really are. What occupies your time and your hours? Be specific and be honest.

What are My Priorities?
You do what’s important to you. You make time for what you deem the priority. A man who worships sports will do anything and everything to get home in time to watch ‘that game’ or to go to that ‘event’. There are many parents who so indulge their children in the ‘god of game’ that they spend hours each day playing sports to the neglect of spiritual instruction, family worship, and praising God in the home. This is not to pit sports and spirituality against each other. But often the god of sports has triumphed in our hearts and removed Christ from the ravishing delight of centrality in our minds. Do you prioritize sleep? Do you sleep your weekends away? Do you prioritize movies and entertainment? Do you stay up late watching certain things that you can’t arise early the next morning to awaken the dawn with your praises to God’s most worthy Name? Do you work so long and so hard that you’re unwilling to exert energy to go to the prayer meeting of your local church? Everyone has priorities and everyone makes time to do what is important to them. Examine your heart and your life.

Guarding from the Distraction of Busyness.
Good things that become God things are sinful things. When something that is good becomes a heart-craving and a ‘need’ in someone’s life, that good thing has become an idol, and thus, it is a god-thing. There are many things that occupy our hearts -- many, if not all, of which are profitable and good. But when ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ and ‘good blessings’ crowd our lives, occupy our hearts, distract us from Christ, usurp all our energies, we have veered off course and are in need to stop, consider what has gone wrong, and make adjustments. Praise God for His clear Word that guides us as believers to guard our hearts, manage our time well, and live maximally for Christ’s glory! Let us never forget that in Jesus’ parable of the soils, the third soil that he describes — the seed that was sown among thorns — lives a life ‘distracted with other things’. It’s not only sinful things that keep people out of heaven. It’s good things that become god things that prevent multitudes from entering heaven.

The Nonnegotiable Priorities.
So what can we do? How can we take inventory and guard our hearts, our lives, and our time? Here are some guiding thoughts and some essential priorities to ensure that we have in our lives. Whatever else a child of God may neglect, let him not neglect these important, nonnegotiable priorities. I’ll list four.

1) HEARING FROM GOD BY READING SCRIPTURE.
You probably don’t go most days without eating food. In fact, like most of us, you probably eat multiple meals a day. You need it! You enjoy it! You take pleasure in it! How much more must man live not by physical bread for our bodies but by the spiritual food — the Bread of Heaven — for our souls. To live a healthy, flourishing, joy-filled, Christ-centered life, all believers must hear from God as they read Holy Scripture. Eternal life is to know God and to know Christ! Knowing God comes as we allow the Word of God to dwell richly within us. Let us put off anything that crowds out our private, intimate times of hearing from God as we read, study, examine, apply, and memorize His precious Word. Like an eye-gripping, beautiful garden, God’s Word has sweet flowers of delight, sweet fragrances of divine comfort, and endless buds to stop and consider, look at, and smell and enjoy to the fullest! Let us hear from God by reading His Word.

2) COMMUNING WITH GOD IN EARNEST PRAYER.
No Christian grows apart from prayer. What a man is on his knees before God, that is what he really is, and no other. A man may have riches, prosperity, prestige, fame, and influence but if he has not regular, fervent, prioritized, and heart-warming times of fellowship with God in prayer, he has much to learn in the Christian journey. Prayer is the holy incense that takes the sacrifice of our lives up to heaven. Prayer is the soul’s converse with heaven. To neglect prayer is to forfeit strength. To minimize prayer is to depend on self. To abandon prayer is to welcome backsliding. A man falls on his knees in private before he falls into great sin in public. A man who does not pray in private is on the highway to backsliding and sinful living. Let us wage war with the devil, with temptation, yes indeed, with our own hearts and fleshly desires! Let us commune with our gracious Father, our merciful Savior, and our comforting Spirit! Let us approach God’s holy throne as Christ Himself always intercedes for us as the Spirit of God takes our prayers to God for us.

3) INVOLVING YOURSELF RELENTLESSLY TO YOUR LOCAL CHURCH.
To follow Christ as one’s Head means that the Christian joins himself to Christ’s body, the Church. Just as a bodily limb cannot live severed from the body, so impossible is it for a Christian to live severed from a local assembly of believers. Don’t allow the busyness of life — sports, TV, social media, laziness, work, vacations — seize you from the precious Bride of Christ! You need the Church! A local church should reside as the centerpoint of the believer’s life. Biblically, what we observe in Acts is that the believers made the community of believers, preaching, evangelism, and prayer the nucleus, the hub, the priority, the nonnegotiable priority in their lives. God used it. He matured them. They suffered much! He was glorified. Whatever you do: mortify the temptation and part with the thought that you don’t need Christ’s Church! You do!

4) MEDITATING ON TRUTH & EXAMINING YOUR SPIRITUAL CONDITION.
In an astounding verse at the end of 2 Corinthians, Paul writes to a church of believers and pastorally exhorts them to ‘examine themselves and see whether they’re in the faith’ (2 Cor 13.5). Believers must take spiritual inventory regularly. Where is there sin? Where am I being tempted? Where am I loving self more than loving Christ? Where are my idols? Am I hiding any sin at all in a private corner of my life? Am I loving the brethren? Am I walking in obedience to the truth as I practice righteousness? Am I believing the truth about Christ while submitting to Him and following Him? Let us examine our souls.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

A Christian has been redeemed by the blood of Christ and lives for the renown of Christ. He has submitted to, lives surrendered to, and is sanctified to his God. A Christian comes after Christ and denies himself, takes up his cross daily and follows Christ (Luke 9:23). In this brief write-up, I will elaborate on the question: what is a Christian?

A Christian is a...

1. Holy man.A Christian is positionally holy for he has been united to Christ by faith and because of His new heart, and his new position before God, and His new nature granted by divine favor, he longs to live out in his conduct what he has become in his position. He repents of his sin and trusts in Christ. He is positionally righteous and justified because He is in Christ and he longs to live a holy, set apart, distinct, Christ-filled, Christ-enthralled, Christ-centered, and Christ-pursuing life. He hates sin & loves his God!

2. Prayerful man.A true Christian is a praying man. If a man does not pray to God, then he does not know God and therefore is not a Christian. Prayer is the lifeblood of the believer. It is the pulse that reveals whether there is life or not. Prayer is communion with God and the believer cannot get enough of this. He quiets himself to meet with God, pour out his heart before God, thank God for salvation, pray for greater holiness, and intercede for God’s people. Christians pray.

3. Serious man.Christians understand that eternity is fast approaching for everyone. The believer in Christ cannot contain the joy he has that Christ has borne his hell and satisfied divine wrath. And because of this, he lives with a holy pursuit, with a holy seriousness, with a holy vengeance for purity, for godliness, for truth, for Christ. He fights in the Christian life with a holy earnestness and a serious demeanor. He doesn’t trifle with life. He is serious about life & about His God.

4. Evangelistic man.A soul that Christ has redeemed is a soul that earnestly longs for others to go to heaven and escape divine punishment. O how Christians long to save souls! Christians know what they’re saved from, and who they’re saved by, and what they’re saved to, and they long to proclaim this gospel and plead with others to repent and trust Christ.

5. Worshiping man.God seeks those who worship Him in spirit and in truth. That means that God seeks true worshipers. A true Christian worships God. To worship is to respond to God’s revelation about Himself with awe, praise, wonder, and obedience. A Christian worships God as a way of life and repents when he sins. A Christian loves to worship and longs for heaven. He communes with God in His Word and as God reveals Himself there, the believer responds with joy, obedience, proclamation, awe, and integrity.

6. Churchgoing man.No true Christian abandons Christ’s body, the Church. All true Christians join themselves to Christ as the Head and His body, the Church. A Christian longs to be with God’s people. He cannot get enough of the faithful, biblical preaching of the Word, corporate worship with God’s people, prayer, singing, fellowship, and the ordinances. A Christian loves Christ and Christ’s body.

7. Humble man.Nothing is more antithetical for a redeemed sinner by grace than to live with pride. Pride is the first sin, the root of all sin, and the devil’s sin. Pride is anti-God and, of course, God hates pride. A Christian is humble because he knows what he deserves and he has received God’s grace in Christ and thus he lives humbly. He lives near the cross. He hides in His Christ. He is lowly.

8. Expectant man.A Christian knows that salvation is nearer now than when he first believed. Christ will return quickly. He is near! He diligently labors for his Master and he watchfully anticipates the any-moment coming in the clouds. O the man of God is a man of eternity! He expects heaven! He longs for heaven! He longs for his Christ. He hopes for heaven for there he’ll see his God.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Psalm 127:4 — "Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth.

1. Children, like arrows, are sharp, powerful & can accomplish great things! An arrow, carefully and diligently sharpened, can accomplish powerful results if shot rightly, powerfully, accurately, and precisely. Let us remember that our children, in a similar way, can accomplish great tasks and effect tremendous results if we would sharpen them diligently and in biblically.

2. Children, like arrows & unlike a sword, can go where the warrior cannot go (v.4)! Parents must remember that our children can go to places in the world, in the region, in the city that we ourselves are unable to go. Just as an arrow that flies from the hand of the warrior goes swiftly to a location where the warrior himself cannot go, so our children can accomplish great things far and wide!

3. Children, like arrows, are to be offensive weapons to fight battles that are afar off & coming (v.4)! Arrows in the hand of a warrior are never defensive weapons. Never does a mighty man sharpen an arrow just to hide it in his quiver. Rather, he readies his arrows and his mind so that when danger approaches, he stands ready to engage in combat. In a similar way, even now there may be battles that are afar off and over the horizon, but give it time and the combat will draw near. Let us prepare our children for battle!

4. Children, like arrows, must be deployed by God who knows how to use them best (v.4)! Ultimately, the arrow is in the power and under the prerogative of the mighty warrior. The arrow does not pick and choose and aim and fire itself. Rather, the warrior lets it go. Ultimately, we as parents aren’t ‘Ultimate Warriors’, God is! God must deploy them for He knows how to use our arrows best.

5. Children, like arrows, must be straightened to be powerful thru discipline (v.4)! A warrior preparing for combat straightens his arrows so that there are no rough patches on the shaft. It must be strong, powerful, able to penetrate, and certainly not flimsy. Likewise, we must straighten, fortify, and establish our children to be powerful and resolute through discipline and fervent instruction.

6. Children, like arrows, must be sharpened thru instruction, teaching (v.4)! A warrior could pick the most sturdy instrument for the arrow but if the head is dull, it will accomplish no good. Let us sharpen our children, like arrows, constantly, fervently, intentionally, biblically, and theologically so that they are sharp in their knowledge of God, His ways, His Word, and how to live for His glory!

7. Children, like arrows, must be aimed/directed for the future thru sharing the faith, vision, future, truth, gospel (v.4)! If a mighty man of war does not put himself in a ready position for battle with his arsenal readily available and his arrows at his disposal for future battle he is a warrior that is soon to perish. Let us direct our children toward Christ and prepare them for the long-haul to serve Him as we proclaim the essentials of faith, the ultimate passion for God’s glory and the necessity of a life of integrity.

8. Children, like arrows, should be aware of how powerful they are & the effect they can have (for the Master's use) (v.4)! Arrows can kill. They can penetrate deep below the skin and can kill the enemy or, if wrongly utilized, can harm oneself or a friend. Let children understand that they are powerful beings made in God’s image and yet they can have such a mighty and powerful impact for the Master’s use. Let us employ them and send them as powerful instruments in the Redeemer’s hands!

9. Children, like arrows, must be aimed at the bullseye (salvation of their souls) thru constant evangelization with grace-driven, Christ-exalting urgency! No matter how skilled and professional a warrior may be, if he aims at nothing, he’s sure to hit it. O let parents learn this truth! We must aim and direct our children to hit the bulls-eye. The bulls-eye of childrearing is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want our children to know the gospel, comprehend the gospel, believe this gospel, surrender their lives to obey this gospel, follow Jesus Christ, and live confidently and courageously for Him regardless of the cost and even to the point of death.

10. Children, like arrows, must be let go & leave the bow (home) (v.4)! No front-line warrior would ever attend vigilantly to his arrows in the home and then refuse to release the arrow in the demanding moments of warfare. In similar way, parents must prepare to release and send them!

11. Children, like arrows, once shot in warfare cannot be retrieved -- so make every moment count! (v.4)! In combat, warriors never would cross into enemy territory to retrieve the already-shot arrows. Once fired, they’re gone. Parents must redeem the time, making the most of every opportunity to point our children to Christ and to lovingly urge them to surrender to Him! Let us daily teach, faithfully model, and woo them to Christ!

The Text of Ps 90:14—Hebrew:‏שַׂבְּעֵנוּ בַבֹּקֶר חַסְדֶּךָ וּנְרַנְּנָה וְנִשְׂמְחָה בְּכָל־יָמֵינוּ׃Author’s Translation:“O satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love so that we will sing for joy and we will be glad all our days!”

What does it mean to be satisfied in God’s love in the morning? In this wisdom psalm, Moses records the everlasting nature of God, the brevity of man’s life and the thrilling reality that God’s love remains constant all through the lives of His people. In fact, Moses prayed: O satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast, covenant-keeping love [‏חֶסֶד, hesed]. But what does it look like for us as God’s people to be satisfied with God’s love? What needs to happen? Where do we begin?

Here, I’ll provide six brief remarks about God’s great love for us! Let us satisfy our souls in Him each morning afresh.

God’s Steadfast Love [‏חֶסֶד, hesed] Is An...

1. Undying love.The love that God has for His people is an everlasting love that endures forever. That’s why the psalmists proclaim so frequently that “His love [‏חֶסֶד, hesed] endures forever” (see, e.g., Ps 136). As eternal as God Himself is in all of His fullness, so eternal is the mighty love of God. It never dies or fades. It never ends or terminates. It won’t ever end!

2. Undeserved love. Sinners lived lives of sin and God’s love was unwelcomed and unwanted from the sinner’s perspective who loved his sin and plunged into self-centered living. But when the kindness and love of God appeared, He graciously saved His elect, whom He had foreknown and predestined from eternities ago! There is nothing that we have to attribute our salvation to other than the undeserved love of our God. His love triumphed over our stubbornness and conquered!

3. Unfathomable love.No earthly creature ever could fathom and exhaust the fullness of divine richness encompassed in His almighty and infinite love. No one can define fully or comprehend totally the infinite extremities and everlasting blessings that will flow from God’s mighty mercy to all of His creatures individually. He lovingly plunges all His people into His everlasting love now and to eternity.

4. Unrelenting love.Our love wanes. So often our love grows cold. But God’s love never fades nor does it ever diminish in power and in force. The covenant-keeping love of God never relents or minimizes. What a mind-boggling and thrilling thought: the same love that God wondrously had in eternity past in electing us to be His own forever is the same love that He has now for us and the same love that He will have forevermore as we dwell with Him in everlasting glory! Like an overwhelming, mighty, ever-flowing waterfall rushing down with unstoppable and unrelenting force, so great is God’s love for all of His people whom He loves in Christ.

5. Unconditional love.The love of God is free, rich, undeserved, and not contingent on our behavior! Did you hear that. Never does God say I’ll love you if…” or “I’ll keep loving you only if you measure up….” Those who are united to Christ by faith have the fullness of God’s love without end, without condition, without limitation, without hesitation, with everlasting duration! What a glorious love!

6. Unsurpassed love.Nothing in all the world can surpass the strong and saving love of Christ! No creature has loved like this nor could any creature ever conjure up enough strength to love like this. It comes fully from God and triumphs all other loves! His love surpasses all other loves and dwarfs all other expressions of love that men could ever display. O the love of God conquers all loves and wins the heart with its supreme, other-worldly, heart-winning, and soul-ravishing love. Satisfy yourself in this divine love each morning!

"Unforgiveness imprisons people in their past and makes those they refuse to forgive their jailers. Those who refuse to forgive continually pick at an open wound, never allowing it to heal. Having chosen to embrace hate, they become tortured prisoners of the offense and the offender. Such behavior is foolish, lacks common sense and is self-destructive. It consumes unforgiving people’s lives, robs them of their well-being, and deprives them of happiness and joy."